Flying Bounce Houses - A Potentially Deadly Hazard For Kids
This week large inflatables were blown onto one of Atlanta's busiest roadways. I drive in that busy corridor frequently, and it is stunning that the city was spared a major incident. According to media reports, owners blamed the early installation phase for the lack of anchoring. This latest episode of 'flying inflatables' was relatively harmless, but other incidents have led to injuries or fatalities. Is it time to ban inflatable bounce houses?
A boy plays in the bounce house at a pumpkin patch Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2018, in Seal Beach, Calif. (AP ... More Photo/Jae C. Hong)
The answer to that question is probably 'no,' but experts are calling for changes. My colleague Dr. John Knox is a meteorology professor at the University of Georgia. He is one of the world's foremost experts on atmospheric sciences, including aviation meteorology. I suspect he did not have 'flying bounce houses' on his scholarly bingo card alongside his work on clear-air turbulence. However, Knox and his collaborators have become the foremost research group in the world documenting windy conditions and large inflatable structures. According to a UGA website, 'Over a decade ago, Dr. John Knox saw a joke on Facebook comparing the phenomenon of runaway bounce houses to the scientific study of dust particles in the atmosphere. Several years and hundreds of hours of intensive, intricate research later, Dr. Knox now admits that bounce houses are no joke.' In 2022, he and colleagues published a study in The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society entitled, "Wind-Related Bounce House Incidents in Meteorological, Regulatory, and Outreach Contexts."
At the time of publication, their analysis revealed 479 weather-related bounce house injuries and 28 deaths. The study also found that bounce houses are especially dangerous for children because they are often improperly anchored or parents are inattentive during play. Using data mining techniques and cartography, the team identified meteorological causes and connected them to incidents using geographical and social science methods.
I asked Knox what needs to be done short of banning inflatables. He told me, 'What should happen? Federal regulations on their use in windy weather (or in all weather) would be a good start.' He pointed out, however, that their 2022 study found that many incidents occur where the nearest weather observations show winds under typical thresholds used in the states that do have regulations. During the warm season when bounce houses are popular, thunderstorms or windy conditions can happen suddenly. Knox went on to say, 'So even national regulations wouldn't be perfect. But the process of implementing federal regulations would raise public awareness of the dangers.'
The rings represent outflow boundaries moving away from thunderstors. They can cause gusty ... More conditions suddenly that pose hazards for improperly secured bounce houses and inflatables.
Knox continues to maintain what is likely the most robust database of bounce house incidents in the world. The website also includes safety recommendations and information about how different states regulate bounce house activity. Some interesting facts found on the website as of May 31st, 2025 include:
The website also has accessible information on all known events spanning 2000 to 2025 and the associated weather types. What are some of the typical weather types connected to the events? They include cold fronts, dust devils, outflow boundaries, thunderstorms, Santa Ana winds, and sea breezes.
Researchers are increasingly questioned about the value of scientific research. Knox and his team's work is an exemplar of how multidisciplinary research spanning meteorology, cartography, geography, and other social sciences disciplines can inform decisionmakers and save lives. Knox said, 'This research is a prototype for the kind of work geographers can do…. And then the website development exhibits the community outreach angle that is classic geography. So, this is what geography looks like--no siloes, everything together.'
PHOENIX, ARIZONA - MARCH 30: A dust devil blows amongst the fans during the final round of the Ford ... More Championship presented by Wild Horse Pass 2025 at Whirlwind Golf Club in Wild Horse Pass on March 30, 2025 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBS News
8 minutes ago
- CBS News
Pittsburgh-area house with 20,000 rounds of ammo inside catches fire
A fire ripped apart a home in Westmoreland County on Friday morning, igniting thousands of bullets inside. Shots rang out as flames poured out of a home in Vandergrift. It was the sounds of the 20,000 rounds of ammo stored inside. "It was constant pops," next-door neighbor Don Cocco said. It was around 8 a.m. when Cocco smelled smoke and heard his neighbors screaming that the house next to his on Emerson Street was on fire. "When I came out, I seen all of the smoke in the eaves," Cocco said. They began to panic and banged on the front door, thinking the woman who lived there was home. Cocco said it wasn't long before she pulled up to the home as flames shot out of the side air conditioner. "The flames were pretty high, and I was scared for my house," Cocco said. Shortly after fire crews arrived, ammo started to take off. "It was very scary because, you know, nobody knew where they were going," Cocco said. Vandergrift #1 Fire Chief Randy Dunmire said he quickly pulled their crews out of the building. "It's just kind of like flying around some. It doesn't have a lot of velocity to it because it's not coming out of a barrel, but it still has enough from the powder," Dunmire said. Fire crews attacked the blaze from the outside for about 30 minutes until they knew all the ammo had exploded. The bullets traveled far, with some shell casings found about a half a block away. "We decided if we didn't hear any for 10 minutes, then it was OK to go in," Dunmire said. After knocking the fire down, crews did a lot of manual work, tackling fire in the walls and ceilings. In the process, they rotated crews due to the heat. "It was a dangerous situation for quite some time," Dunmire said. Dunmire said they saved some rifles and handguns, but many were destroyed. He called the house a total loss. They're in contact with the state fire marshal. Dunmire said he's not ruling on a cause, though he believes it was accidental. Cocco is just grateful everyone is OK. "I give all of the credit in the world to the fire departments. Unbelievable job they did," Cocco said.
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Friday Racing At Monmouth Park Cancelled Due To Excessive Heat
Friday Racing At Monmouth Park Cancelled Due To Excessive Heat originally appeared on Paulick Report. Monmouth Park has cancelled Friday's scheduled eight-race card due to excessive heat, track officials races cancelled Friday will be brought back as extras for Friday, Aug. 1, and the racing office will also look to use them over the next weekend. Entries will be taken on Sunday, July 27, for next Friday's resumes at Monmouth Park on Saturday with a first race post time of 12:50 p.m. This story was originally reported by Paulick Report on Jul 25, 2025, where it first appeared.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Stunning Grand Canyon Fossils Reveal Evolution's Weird Experiments
A stunning new fossil find from the Grand Canyon fills in some blanks from a time when evolution began experimenting with weird new forms. About half a billion years ago, life on Earth really started cooking in an event we now call the Cambrian explosion. The fossil record from that time reveals a spike in bizarre, complex creatures appearing within a relatively short amount of time, laying the roots for most of the major animal groups that exist today. Frustratingly, fossils from later in the Cambrian period are rarer, so we don't have a clear picture of evolution's experimental second album. But a newly discovered batch of extremely well-preserved fossils could patch up that gap. These are about 505 million years old – 3 million years younger than the Burgess Shale, the layer in which fossils from the Cambrian explosion appear. Related: A team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge found more than 1,500 small, carbonaceous fossils in samples from the Bright Angel Formation (BAF) of the Grand Canyon, which was once a shallow marine environment. The vast majority of the fossils are priapulid worms, along with a couple hundred crustaceans and a few mollusks. Although ecological resources were plentiful at the time, competition was also on the rise, rewarding species that exploited new niches. Analysis of these fossils revealed a variety of adaptations to do just that. A worm species called Kraytdraco spectatus, for example, was found to be covered in teeth sporting elaborate filaments, which varied in shape and length based on where they were on the body. The researchers suggest that they used their tougher teeth to scrape and rake surfaces, kicking up food particles that they could then filter out of the water using the longer filaments. Crustacean fossils featured signs of suspension feeding by way of tiny hairs that pushed food particles towards the mouth to be ground up by molar-like structures. The mollusks, meanwhile, sported rows of shovel-shaped teeth that could have been dragged front-to-back to scrape algae or microbes from surfaces. The Cambrian explosion gets plenty of attention because it's so well-represented in the fossil record, but that was just the beginning. The newly described fossils, with their exceptional level of preserved detail, provide a fascinating glimpse into the time soon after that, when complex life was established and comfortable, and had the stability to start innovating with new forms. And we should be glad it did: most of the major groups (or phyla) of animals got their start during the Cambrian. That includes arthropoda, encompassing all insects, arachnids, and crustaceans. And there's chordata, which includes us and the rest of our backbone-bearing brethren. The competitive period of the late Cambrian could have cemented the strategies that helped animals stay successful half a billion years later. "If the Cambrian Explosion laid the foundations of modern metazoan adaptive solutions, it is the scaling up of their competitive interactions that may have enforced directional, long-term trends of functional innovation in the Phanerozoic biosphere," the researchers write. The study was published in the journal Science Advances. Related News Neither Scales Nor Feathers: Bizarre Appendage Discovered on Reptile Fossil America's Largest Crater Has Surprise Link to Grand Canyon, Study Finds 500-Million-Year-Old Fossil Suggests Ocean Origin For Spiders Solve the daily Crossword
